Henry Linger awarded the inaugural Bill Kent Fellowship (02 Dec 2005)
"The inaugural Bill Kent Prato Research Fellowship has been awarded to Dr Henry Linger for a project in the emerging interdisciplinary research field of Natural and Artificial Immune Systems (NAIS). Dr Linger will use the grant to build on existing collaborations with colleagues in Italy, with whom he will be running an academic workshop and summer school in NAIS, followed by a planning session for a proposed joint masters degree."

Monash Small Grants 2006 Success (29 Nov 2005)
There were three successful small grants awarded to SIMS staff for 2006:
1. An explanatory study of development practices used in the development of small business web-based systems - Dr Kathy Lynch and Dr Peta Darke (CIs).
2. Strategic Positioning of IT Governance within Corporate Governance: Maximising the Value of IT Investments through IT Governance - Dr Adi Prananto (CI)
3. Towards a Knowledge Commons: Modelling a transformation of library services and information resource provision in the Vocational Education Sector - Prof Don Schauder (CI), Dr Graeme Johanson and Ms Kerry Tanner (Mentors), Ms Bea Donkin and Mr Gary Hardy (Partners, Management Interest Group).

Prof. Sue McKemmish an ARC millionaire! (10 Nov 2005)
With the results of the latest round of ARC grants, Professor Sue McKemmish has now been involved as a Chief Investigator with ARC grant projects
valued at more than one million dollars. Congratulations!

DEST Systemic Infrastructure Initiative bid successful:
DART
[announced 26th August 2005]
A Monash University-led
bid for funding under the DEST Systemic Infrastructure Initiative
has been funded to the full amount of $3.237 million. The funds
will allow Monash and its partners (James Cook University and
University of Queensland) to undertake the Dataset
Acquisition, Accessibility and Annotation e-Research Technology Project
(DART).

The DEST Web site describes the project as follows:
"The
DART project is a significant and strategically
important project of interest to many institutions who are
taking up the challenge of e-Research. This project will provide
solutions to deal with the life cycle of research - from lab
book to formal outputs to teaching. In doing so it will draw
on differing needs and discipline perspectives of a range of
research communities by pulling together expertise in marine
science and sensor grids, expertise in distributed systems,
database research and large data set management, and grid computing
research."

The project will rely on some of the high level of expertise
available in the Faculty--notably, in grid computing and information
systems. It will also build upon the Sun Grid infrastructure,
which was established in 2004 through a prestigious industrial
grant from Alphawest and Sun Microsystems in 2004.

Congratulations to Asad Khan, David Abramson, Sue
McKemmish, Don Schauder, John Crossley, and David
Green, for an outstanding achievement. Congratulations also
to Dr Andrew Treloar [a SIMS Alumni, now working for ITS],
who was the project proposal
coordinator.

Knowledge Management Laboratory Launch (Dec 2004)
In late November, a function was held to celebrate the launch of the Knowledge Management Laboratory. Photos.More details.

ARTS/IT Small Grants Success
(21 Dec 2004)
Prof. Sue McKemmish, Prof. Marian Quartly (History), Prof. Eric
Ketelaar (University of Amsterdam) and others have been awarded
a $10,000 ARTS/IT Small Grant for a project: 'Memories,
Communities, Technologies: A Research Framework for Interdisciplinary
e-Research at the Nexus Between the Humanities, Sciences and
Information Technology.'

CCNR awarded extra
funding (Jul 2004)
The Centre for Community Networking Research is pleased to receive
an additional $30,000 from the Australian government to continue
to promote the interests of civil society in its input to the
World Summit on the Information
Society. CCNR created a Statement on behalf of the Roundtable
on Australian Civil Society and submitted it to the first Word
Summit in December last year in Geneva. With the extra financial
help of the Office of the Information Economy, it is now working
towards the next Summit
in Tunis in November 2005.See also earlier
CCNR news.

CRC in Sustainable Tourism - scoping
study grant awarded (Jun 2004)
Linda Dawson, Sue Foster, and other team members have secured
a grant for a scoping study for a CRC in Sustainable Tourism.
This study, entitled Benchmarking Location Based Systems,
will explore the current state-of-the-art in location based
systems (LBS) in the Australian tourism industry. The aim is
to identify key players, current trends and key areas for development,
which will provide the foundations for future projects in mobility
and sustainable tourism for this team and others. The findings
of the scoping study will be reported at an ICT theme workshop
in October before the EOI round for 2005 is due.

The initiative is a joint Monash/Victoria University/University
of Queensland endeavour. Linda is a co-team leader for Monash/VU
together with Dr Pramod Sharma for UQ. Other members of the
Monash/VU team are:
Susan Foster, Monash (SIMS); Prof. John Zeleznikow, VU; Paul
Hawking, VU; Andrew Stein, VU
Funding of $40K has been awarded for research assistance, focus
groups and team workshops.

Dr Livia Iacovino
awarded Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal 2003 (13 May 2004)
SIMS researcher Dr Livia Iacovino has been awarded the Faculty
of Information Technology Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal 2003,
for her PhD thesis entitled "Ethical-legal frameworks
for recordkeeping: Regulatory models, participants and their
rights and obligations". This medal is awarded to
the best Doctoral thesis in each Faculty, each year. SIMS academics
have won this award two years running, as Dr Linda Dawson received
the medal in 2002.

New Chair of Archival Systems Appointed
(May 2004)
Prof. Sue McKemmish has been appointed to the Chair of Archival
Systems within the Faculty of Information Technology.

MPA 2003 Supervisor of the Year Award Winner (26
April 2004)
Associate Professor Frada Burstein from the School of Information
Management and Systems, was presented with the Monash
Postgraduate Association Supervisor of the Year Award for 2003
on Monday 26 April 2004.Collier Charitable Fund Success
(Jan 2004)
Mrs Kathy Lynch has acquired two equipment grants from this
fund for 2004. The first is a grant of $1600 to buy a digital
camera and accessories. The second is a grant of $7500 (with
A/Prof. Julie Fisher) to buy two lightweight, ultra compact
computers for SIMS travelers.